SECRETARY'S REPORT. 217 



This, I am convinced, will be found to be perfectly practica- 

 ble, and a rapid growth of pine wood, intermixed, as it should 

 alwa3^s be, with some deciduous growth like the white birch, 

 will be found to be more profitable than the use to which they 

 are now put. 



I know many pastures of good strong soil, never ploughed 

 within the memory of the living, some of which are known not to 

 have been ploughed for a hundred and fifty years, which require 

 from eight to ten acres to a cow, so entirely buried are they in 

 moss and bushes. Such lands can be planted with pines at a 

 small cost, and would soon be covered with a growth which 

 would pay a large percentage on the outlay. I have, during the 

 past season, examined over five hundred acres of cultivated 

 pines in different parts of the State, varying in age from three 

 months to twenty years, and can testify to the surprising 

 rapidity with which such a plantation will cover the ground, 

 concealing the fact of their being planted by the hand of man, 

 and assuming the appearance of a dense forest. In one in- 

 stance the owner informed me that his plantation had averaged 

 him a cord to the acre every year for twenty years during which 

 it had been planted, while the land, a light barren sand, had 

 apparently been improved, and a thick imdergrowth of hard 

 wood was apparently ready to succeed the pine when the oppor- 

 tunity offered. I have seen a growth of pitch pine, made this 

 year, of over two feet six inches in length by measurement, 

 and a growth of white pine, made in tlie same time, of two 

 feet nine inches. The past year was an exception, for while 

 generally the growth of wood is interrupted by the drought 

 during the hottest months of summer, and then starts out a 

 new growth in the autumn, it continued with extraordinary 

 vigor all through the season, in those parts of the State which 

 were favored by frequent rains. The average growth would 

 not, of course, equal that stated above. 



But still, there are circumstances, and they are not by any 

 means unfrequent, where it is both practicable and desirable to 

 take other melliods of improvement for pasture and grass lands, 

 and we come now to consider more in detail the 



28* 



